Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to this fourth quarter 2022 and full year presentation for 2022 for Gränges. My name is Jörgen Rosengren. I am Gränges CEO, and I'm joined here by our CFO and Deputy CEO, Oskar Hellström. The fourth quarter of 2022 was a stable quarter which concluded a record year. We had stable sales volume of approximately 110,000 tons relative to 112 last year. Across our segment, we had a continued stable demand in Americas, and a very strong post COVID recovery in Asia, whereas the situation in Europe was decidedly weaker. Our profit, measured as the adjusted operating profit, was up 10% in the quarter to SEK 153 million relative to SEK 139 million.
This is, of course, despite the quite serious challenges that we faced in the outside world with notably energy prices in Europe. We had a strong cash flow, we reduced the net debt, and we improved our leverage during the quarter. Taking as whole, 2022 was our best year ever. It was our best year financially, and it was the best sustainability performance we've ever recorded. This morning we also announced a further expansion in battery components. Looking at the sales volume per segment and per customer group, we had in Americas largely seasonal slowdown in HVAC of about 5%, and also in other niches, whereas specialty packaging and automotive performed well. The total Americas sales volume was largely constrained by capacity or production capacity and was up about 1%.
The strong trend in automotive continues in Eurasia, where automotive was up a full 17%, whereas the weakness in Europe primarily resulted in a decline in other niches and in specialty packaging by 43% and 11% respectively. The total sales volume in Eurasia was down 5%, and this is a mix of a weak development in Europe with approximately 10% down in volume or so, but an extremely strong development in Asia, like I said before, with 15%+. Taking this for the whole group, we can say that automotive continues to be a strong support, with good backlogs, good order book, and good sales also in the quarter, whereas HVAC and other niches performed worse.
Specialty packaging in total performed well on the base of good demand, but also increased production capacity. The total volume was down 2% then, a little up in the Americas and a little down in Eurasia, but largely stable. With that, I'd like to turn over to Oskar, who will take us through the financials for the fourth quarter. Go ahead.
Thank you, Jörgen. I think before drilling down in the fourth quarter, which I will certainly do, I think it's worth to spend a little bit on time on the full year, which so happens to be a new record year for Gränges, as we heard from Jörgen. We've never had a higher adjusted operating profit than SEK 1,150 million that we delivered in 2022. As you can see from this chart, we have now managed to more than recover the profit drop we experienced in 2020 as a consequence of the COVID pandemic.
That said, the 2022 profit is generated on a higher sales volume, and that means that the EBIT per ton of SEK 2,400 for full year 2022 is not yet fully back to historic peak levels, but we are gradually getting there. Now, leaving the full year perspective and looking at the fourth quarter, as Jörgen mentioned, we experienced a year-over-year decline of 2% in sales volume. If we look at the margin, the EBIT per ton, however, continued to improve from SEK 1,200 in Q4 2021 to SEK 1,400 in Q4 2022. If we look at the individual business areas, they move in a similar direction, but there are some differences.
In Europe, as we heard from Jörgen, we continue to experience a weak market for especially general engineering and building construction products within the other niches market. We see that also in the fourth quarter. This continues to impact capacity utilization and also the ability to optimize metal management, and that has a negative operating profit per ton impact. In addition to this, the weak market demand also makes it more difficult to immediately offset continued high costs with price increases, and especially so then for the energy costs. Although we saw some relief on the European natural gas market in the quarter, this did not benefit our earnings in the quarter as we entered Q4 with high inventory levels in our Konin plant, as we talked about in our Q3 presentation.
From a year-over-year perspective, I think the challenging situation in Europe was offset by strong performance in Asia in the quarter. If we look in total, the capacity utilization in Eurasia was about 70% in the fourth quarter. In Americas, we see a more stable market situation, and as a consequence, we have a higher year-over-year margin improvement there. From a sequential perspective, we did, however, experience a larger market decline in Americas than in Europe. Keep in mind this is from a significantly higher level. This is related to three things. It's volume, mix, and productivity related. As for volume, what we see there is to a large extent normal seasonal effects, with Q4 being the quarter with the lowest sales volume in the year.
It's also constrained by the Salisbury facility that continues to operate below normal level. In total, the capacity utilization in Americas was about 80% in the quarter. Looking at the quarterly performance for 2022, I would also like to comment on an adjustment that we made that is affecting the first 3 quarters of the year. As a result of our review of the annual accounts, we made a non-cash inventory adjustment of negative SEK 80 million related to raw materials in Gränges Americas that they imported in Q1 to Q3, 2022. In order to show representative comparables for future periods, the inventory adjustment has been recognized in our accounts as increased cost of materials in the first 3 quarters of 2022 instead of as a one-time effect in the fourth quarter.
The Q1-Q3 figures you show on this slide, they include these adjustments. If we look even in more detail in Q4, we see the sales volume decreasing to 2%, but net sales increasing 10% to SEK 5.4 billion. The main reason for this is, of course, that we increased the average fabrication price, but this is also seen in combination with net changes in foreign exchange rates that was positive SEK 600 million compared with Q4 last year. If we look at the earnings, adjusted operating profit increased by 10% to SEK 153 million.
On an overall level, price adjustments continue to compensate for significant external cost increases also in the fourth quarter, similar to the earlier quarters in the year. Net changes in foreign exchange rates had a positive impact of SEK 33 million in the quarter, and this is primarily then the translation effect from the strengthening of the US dollar against the SEK that we've seen throughout the year. In Q4, the adjusted operating profit also includes SEK 7 million of restructuring costs related to our European business. Depreciation increased with in total SEK 30 million, and a large part of this increase is related to that during Q4 completed the logistics improvement project in Finspång and the first of the two new recycling and casting centers in Huntingdon, and we started to depreciate these.
There are no items affecting comparability in the quarters that the reported operating profit for the group is the same as the adjusted operating profit in Q4. The profit for the period increased to SEK 50 million, and earnings per share increased to SEK 0.47 in the fourth quarter. For the full year, the profit for the period increased to SEK 700 million, and the earnings per share increased to SEK 6.59. The Gränges board of directors proposed an increase of dividend to SEK 2.50 per share for the year. Provided that this is approved by the Annual General Meeting, it means that 38% of the profit is distributed back to our shareholders. During Q4, the financial net debt decreased by close to half a billion SEK to SEK 3.9 billion.
As a result, the leverage improved to 1.9 times EBITDA on the rolling twelve-month basis. This means that we are now back in our target range of 1.2-2 times EBITDA. As you can see on this slide, the adjusted cash flow before financing activities was very strong in the quarter, SEK 679 million. This is driven by the earnings in combination with the release of working capital. Of course, the release in it turn is driven by the seasonal sequential reduction in sales, which is normal in the fourth quarter. This year, we've also put very high focus on reducing operational working capital and primarily then inventory.
This is something I think that the Gränges team delivered very well on in the quarter, and we see the result as the reduced debt. We continue to invest in total SEK 163 million in the expansion of the group in key areas such as sustainable and circular products. The majority of the spend in the quarter relates to the two new recycling and casting centers that we're building in the U.S. and one then, which has now been completed. For the full year 2022, we had a total capital expenditure of about SEK 1 billion, of which half is maintenance and upgrades to existing assets, and half is expansion programs. Before leaving this page, I would just like to briefly comment on how we currently view the capital expenditure for 2023.
With the expansion investments now in battery capacity communicated in Finspång, we expect the full year CapEx for 2023 to be about 1.3 billion SEK at current FX rates. Of this, about 70% is expected to be related to our expansion programs. If we now take a closer look at our business areas, and we start with Gränges Americas, there we continued to experience a fairly good market demand from most segments as Jörgen told us about earlier. The factor limiting our sales in Q4 is really the production capacity in the Salisbury facility that remains constrained and is currently about 3,000 tons below normal level for the quarter.
In terms of demand, we this year also start to see a normalization of the seasonality of the product mix with a higher share of packaging and a lower share of HVAC in the fourth quarter. Although this is quite normal historically for a fourth quarter, it's a less favorable product mix than what we've seen in, for instance, the third quarter this year. Despite the challenges, the adjusted operating profit increased to SEK 99 million, which corresponds to an adjusted operating profit per ton of SEK 1,700. This includes high depreciation from the fourth quarter as we're now starting to depreciate the new recycling center, as I mentioned earlier. Net changes in foreign exchange rates had a positive impact of SEK 20 million in the quarter.
Continuing with Gränges Eurasia, here, as we said, we continued to experience a mixed market development. Demand from automotive customers in Asia, was strong as China continued to recover after the COVID lockdowns. This positive development in Asia did, however, take a little bit of a halt towards the end of the quarter when China changed its COVID strategy, and that had a quite significant short-term impact on our ability to produce and ship products. Still, in total, sales volume in Asia increased by 15% in the fourth quarter. The growth in Asia was, however, offset by 10% lower sales volume in Europe. This is driven by two things. First, the general negative market sentiment outside of automotive. Second, the inventory levels at distributors, that remain very high.
As we talked about in Q3, in anticipation of this anti-dumping duties decision against China, European distributors built up significant stock of Chinese products, for instance, general engineering and building and construction markets. Due to the lower end market demand that we've seen in the year, the inventory levels continued to remain high throughout the fourth quarter. The tight general engineering business and building and construction market, it also reduces the possibility for optimizing metal management, which had a further negative impact on the earnings in the quarter. Still, the adjusted operating profit for the quarter increased to SEK 55 million, corresponding to an adjusted operating profit per ton of SEK 0.9 thousand. Net changes in foreign exchanges had a positive impact of SEK 13 million in the quarter.
These are partly offset then by restructuring costs in Europe of SEK 7 million. With the very challenging situation that we've seen in especially Europe, but also in Asia towards the end of the quarter, I must say that I think that our Eurasia team delivered very well in the fourth quarter. That, I hand over back to Jörgen, who will comment further on the full year of 2022.
Thank you, Oskar. I will speak a little bit about 2022 as a full year, also about our progress against our long-term targets. Then I will wind up by speaking about the outlook for the first quarter of 2023. I think 2022 was a year of challenges for many people, and I think it's a year that many people in the world will be happy to leave behind them. That was also the case for Gränges. We had complete lockdown of our factory in China in the spring, which is, of course, is a very tough thing to handle. In Europe, we were faced with the war in Ukraine and the energy crisis. We had supply chain constraints. We had the all-time high aluminum price peak in the summer.
In the fall, we've of course been hit by inflation and interest rates and not least increasing energy costs. All of this has led throughout the year to dramatic demand swings, and themselves are of course a bit of a challenge to handle for an operations team. All this has also cost money. On the, on the profit level, we've been hit on the operating profit level, we've been hit with the increased cost of approximately 1.5 billion SEK, which is more than the entire operating profit for 2021. Fortunately, we have also been able to work hard on this and also been able to offset most of it.
Most important maybe in the long term is that we've been able to keep up a steady supply and thereby kept our customers supplied in a very, very turbulent period, which is important for long-term customer relations. We have secured long-term financing. We've had a very good progress on sustainability. We've made a new long-term plan and set longer-term targets, which are more ambitious than our historic performance. We keep making expansion, completing expansion projects and making new investments in new products and in new productivity. In total, we were able to achieve productivity and price increase improvements in close cooperation with our customers which exceed the SEK 1,500 million negative, and thereby bring the operating profit up to a good level.
As a summary of the year, you can say that we achieved stable volume, we achieved our best ever profit, and we as a result of also weathering all these challenges, we strengthened our team, we strengthened our operating footprint, and we also got stronger partnerships both upstream and downstream. All in all, a year that we're content with, although the external environment was quite tough. Sustainability performance deserves a special mention. We had record levels for recycling. We had the lowest ever carbon emissions intensity. That in itself, those things happen together. The recycling improvement drives lower carbon emissions intensity. We also got a lot of external accolades for our performance in this area.
For instance, we achieved two new ASI certifications for Gränges Americas, we got for the second year in a row, I believe, the EcoVadis Platinum rating, which places us in the top 1% of the companies that they rate. Quite a good performance. In the year, we also announced our Navigate Plan. It has three phases. I'll speak about them in a second. Restore, build, and invest. It aims at building, in fact, the world's best aluminum technology company in our niche. Achieving a 15% ROCE, achieving a long term 10% EBIT growth, which I might mention we actually surpassed in 2022, and to continue towards a 2040 carbon neutrality target.
In all these three phases, we're starting out, of course, but there were some notable things to record for the year of 2022. In restore, we're aiming to finalize our footprint, utilize it fully, and then optimize it. We are completing several of the expansion projects that we've started in the last couple of years, notably the recycling centers in Poland and in the U.S., and the internal logistics optimization in Finspång. We had a really good utilization in the year in Americas, and it was uneven in Eurasia. It was very good in Europe in the spring and very good in Asia in the fall, you could say.
Most of all, I think we've shown really good performance on price, on mix, and on flexibility throughout the year, thereby, weathering most of the challenges that we've had on the cost or in fact, more than the challenges that we had on the cost side. On build, we've raised the ambition level in our Always Safe program. We're making good progress with the various solutions for electrification and other new businesses also. We've had this fantastic growth in our recycling volumes. That's now quite an important part of our business, in fact. We're making new partnerships for green energy and for aluminum, both scrap, in fact, and primary aluminum. We also aim to invest.
We are starting now to execute the large investment in remelting and recycling for also a very green metal, very green products, very low carbon intensity products in the U.S. We're also continuing our expansion into battery components. Let me speak especially about that because it's important for long-term growth possibilities. Aluminum is in fact a very key material in the electrification revolution. It's low weight and other properties are ideal for that. One part you can see on this page here are several different product categories, but one very interesting product category for us is battery cathode foil, the demand for which will be driven by the very strong expected growth in the demand for lithium-ion battery applications over the next years.
There's a picture of that here. Interestingly, most of the supply chain for such battery cathode foil is located in Asia, but it's being built up in Europe and in North America as a part, I guess, of the general regionalization of supply chains trend in the world. We started deliveries to customer of this product in 2002 in Asia. We're going to start deliveries this year in Europe. Next year, we will start deliveries in North America, and believe them to be maybe the only or maybe one of a very, very few suppliers who can provide this type of service in all three continents to these global battery manufacturers and OEMs.
Therefore, we announced today, in fact, that we're going to double our European battery foil manufacturing capacity to meet the growing interest we're seeing from all these customers, and invest in that capability SEK 600 million over the next two years, and come online with it in 2025. Looking at longer term development, Oskar has already touched on this. Our profitability is below our target. The improvement we're seeing in the profit is offset to some extent by the increase of our capital employed and not the least driven by the large aluminum price in the last year. We hope to be able to make the working capital more efficient and gradually improve this ratio. That will also be helped, of course, by the profit growth, where we're now touching on the target area there.
As you can see, we have a long-term target to grow our operating profit by more than 10% per year, and now we are back towards the zone where we want to be there. Very importantly for us also, we have a good development of our capital structure despite, I might say, the very high aluminum price, where we're now back in our target range of below or between 1-2 times net debt over EBITDA. Dividend, of course, you have seen the board proposal to the AGM of SEK 2.50 per share, which is in our target range of 30%-50% of earnings per share. Turning then to the outlook, there is no doubt that there is uncertainty in the world and that uncertainty in 2023 remains.
In the near term, though, we see a very good support from the automotive backlogs globally, and also from the recovery in China, which we believe will support demand. In other customer segments, we see some hesitancy that makes us believe that the customers will shift their focus from securing supply to managing inventories. That said, though, we still believe in a solid first quarter volume-wise, and we believe more specifically in a sequential improvement of the volume in the first quarter of 2023 over last quarter by 10%. As before, as before, the ambition is, and as we've proven to date, our ambition is to fully offset the year-on-year cost increases with price increases. That's that concludes the outlook.
To summarize this whole thing, we had a solid quarter which ended our best ever year, financially, but also the very good, sustainability performance in 2022 deserves mention. We made good progress on a long-term Navigate plan. As one example, there we're increasing our investment in battery foil capacity now in Europe. The outlook for the first quarter then is a 10% volume growth and a continued ambition to offset all year-on-year cost increases with similar price or productivity increases. That also concludes the presentation that we had prepared for you. Now, operator, we're willing to take any questions that the audience may have.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial star five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial star five again on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Gustaf Schwerin from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hello. Good morning, Oskar Hellström. Gustaf Schwerin, Handelsbanken. I have a few. First on the sequential earnings development in Americas and the Salisbury effect, are you only losing leverage on those 3,000 tons? Or is there actually extra cost impact in Q4 over Q3 as well? If so, can you say roughly how much just to get a better understanding of the mix effect on the earnings? That's the first one.
Hi, Gustaf. It's Oskar here. No, it's a good question there. I think, I mean, the challenge we have in Salisbury has been a little bit of a struggle for us the whole second half of the year. I mean, one part is certainly the impact it has on constraining our sales volume. Basically, should we have this plant fully up to operating at normal levels, we would be able to sell more product in the US. That's one part of it, as you say. In addition to that, of course, sort of from a productivity perspective, yield perspective, which key metric for us, et cetera, the plant is not operating where it should be at this point.
There is more to it just than the volume side of this. I mean, if you look at the sequential development now in the US, third to fourth quarter, obviously Q4 is a seasonally weaker quarter volume-wise, mix-wise, but we also have this productivity aspect in there for this year. I mean, order of magnitude, well, volume is the single most important driver, sort of from a sequential perspective. And then you have mix and productivity, basically half-half of the remaining part there.
All right. I guess when we have had normal seasonality in the past, you typically see a bit of uptick quarter on quarter for HVAC in Q1, right? Is that how we should view it for this year as well?
What would be the normal, I mean, the HVAC business is typically strongest during second and third quarter, but it starts to ramp up during the first quarter, and fourth quarter is typically a very low quarter for HVAC. I mean, we had two extraordinary years now in HVAC in the U.S. I mean, we don't know, of course, exactly how that will develop in the next couple of years. If it returns to sort of the historic seasonality, that is the pattern that you could expect.
Perfect. Also on the, on the inventory situation in Europe, would you say, I mean, are we at similar levels of this on Q3, or have you seen some destocking? Yeah, I mean, what's your best guess of how this is going to play out over the next coming quarters?
Yeah. For clarification, you're talking here, I believe, about the downstream inventory situation among our customers-
Yeah
in Europe, which has been high during the second half of last year, you could say. We also end the year with what we believe is a high downstream inventory, but slightly lower than it was in Q3, so it is decreasing. It's decreasing slowly, however, on the back of basically low-end customer demand in those same sectors. We believe that the inventory situation with what we can see now, the trends we can see now, may correct itself during the first half of the year and lead then therefore to, from our perspective, a better demand situation in the second half of the year in Europe.
Okay. Very clear. Can I squeeze in a last one?
Sure. Absolutely.
Yeah. Just on the foil expansion you're doing now, are you building another rolling mill or are you adding melting capacity? The reason I'm asking is I think you said EUR 400 million for the first 20,000 tons, but that included then the logistics and efficiency investments, right? Just curious what this means for total output in Finspång.
The EUR 400 million is not a figure I recognize, but what we're doing here gradually is we're building more downstream rolling capacity, right? We're reutilizing the upstream remelting, casting, and hot rolling capacity better, we think with this, right? We're trying to move away a little bit from the tonnage numbers on the battery foil because we don't believe it's the right metric. Rather, we should measure, I don't know, square kilometer or something. It is so that we will, with this investment of the EUR 600 million, then double the total capacity that we have projected for Europe then in battery cathode foil.
Maybe I can add to that. I think the EUR 400 million that you referred to is sort of the logistics improvement and automation of the existing Finspång facility, which was completed then by the end of this year, right? That in itself will sort of give the upstream part of Finspång 20% more or 20,000 tons more capacity. I think.
Oh, yeah!
... adding to what Jörgen said, that part of this capacity, we will now be able to direct into the battery foil segment by making some additional investments into that specific product area. It goes hand in hand, so to say.
Okay. Perfect. All right. Thank you very much.
Welcome.
Please state your name and company. Please go ahead.
Nordea with the research. First off, I'm wondering here if you could speak more on your guidance, what you expect will drive the 10% sequential increase in Q1. Is it the recovery in HVAC and further progress in automotive, or what are your thoughts here?
No, like we said, the segment that we believe will work the best in our favor in the first quarter of this year is going to be automotive, right? We expect strong demand in Asia, we expect strong demand in Europe and also in Americas in automotive, although it's a smaller segment there. Sequentially, we also do expect stronger demand and production in HVAC and the other segments in the Americas, as Oskar explained earlier, which is part of the normal seasonal pattern, both in our capacity and in demand, right? We expect, in fact, increased sales volume in all segments in the first quarter.
Yeah. Understood. Just to clarify here, do you have any extra safety stock still? You had some in Konin and Shanghai earlier. Do you still have some?
I mean, we In general, I think the whole Gränges organization did a very good job reducing inventory in the fourth quarter. That said, of course, our teams in especially Konin had a tougher task in doing so because of the market situation. We currently have still high higher than normal, I would say, inventory levels in especially in Konin. We expect to sort of under normal market sort of conditions, the inventory levels will be turned in, let's say, 3 to 4 months. Throughout the first and a little bit into the second quarter, this should normalize, provided that we don't see a significant deterioration of market demand.
Okay, great. Finally, perhaps a follow-up, on the previous question here on the battery CapEx. I'm wondering if you could say what capacity you will have for battery-related products by 2025 after the investment announced today.
We're gonna try to not go into the tonnage for battery products. It's. Now we're talking about battery foil, but I guess I should have mentioned in my overview about the fact that there are other products there where we're in fact also taking volume, right? We're expecting volume already in this year, 2023, in battery casing, and we had a significant volume actually mostly in Asia, but expect significant volume in Asia and Europe this year in battery cooling plates, for instance. The total tonnage of battery products is not something that we're, at least right now, going to report on externally, but I can tell you that it's growing.
Okay. Thank you. That's all from me.
The next question comes from Kenneth Toll Johansson from Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Yeah. A couple of questions. First, in the Salisbury plant, what's happening there? What's the reason why it's not performing full speed? Is it still the safety issues?
Kenneth, good morning. Jörgen here. Yes, we had a safety, we've had a safety issue in Salisbury and as I also commented on earlier, we're generally working on the safety situation in all of Gränges with a view to become much better than we are today. As a result of that, we had a partial closure of the Salisbury plant in the beginning of the 3rd quarter. Since then, we ramped up. It is generally an operational and productivity issue which is related to organizational issues and other issues there, but not specifically related to safety as such. Of course, when you have a factory that's not performing, it needs to improve.
We have good management there, we have good plans, and we also have good confidence that the operating trend in Americas generally and specifically in Salisbury will be a positive one during the spring of 2023.
Great. Then I have some questions on pricing and relating to margins. You talked about batteries that you're initiating or starting deliveries on new products and orders and so on. For the products you have delivered to in China and so on, do you see that you have a good profitability there and that it is higher than the Gränges average?
It varies, Kenneth. In Asia in general, the situation is not so favorable as in Europe and in Americas when it comes to battery products because of the existing existence of a battery component supply chain in that region, right? There we're admittedly facing much tougher price competition for those products, but they can still be quite important contribution generators for us. In Europe and Americas, the situation is the opposite. There we're facing very little competition from domestic suppliers, and therefore have generally speaking, a better situation when it comes to the ability to extract price of course. We think that the investments that we're making in this will generate returns which are in line with or even exceeds.
Which are in line with or even exceed the financial targets that we ourselves have set out, and those of course you know by heart, so I'll refer to them.
I do in fact. Then also I was thinking, with the change or the accounting issues in the Americas, the profitability there wasn't as good as we thought. Do you see a need, a reason to correct pricing to sort of improve the Americas business now? I mean, it's still good, but have you had any thoughts in that direction?
The issues that you referred to have had no impact in fact on our invoices out of the company or into the company. It's strictly an internal-.
Mm.
... accounting thing. Now, as you can see here, also we corrected in all these numbers. The issues, although it's hard to explain, have not really affected our profitability at all, or anything external, any external flows out of or into the company, including cash in 2022.
Mm.
Therefore we don't see that as a reason to increase prices, because we have a good price trend and a good profitability trend, as you also comment on in Americas. Being said though, we do see good reasons to increase prices in Americas, and we intend to do so also. We intend to capitalize on the good situation we have in Americas, on the good customer relationships, and also of course intend to compensate ourselves for the cost increases that we're facing there as elsewhere. I think it is true that the profitability trend was not quite so good as we reported with the year to date Q3 figures, but it's also true that it's a good profitability trend, and one that we intend to continue.
Great. Also, if I remember correctly, you have an opportunity to move pricing in January, and you talked also about higher energy costs, especially in Europe and so on. Would you think that the balance between your pricing and the costs you are experiencing, would be better in the first quarter than it was in the fourth quarter? I know that was clearly the case when comparing the fourth quarter of 2021 with the first quarter of 2022.
That is.
Should we expect a similar trend here?
That is a very good question. Firstly, you're right. We have already concluded many agreements, many contracts with our large customers for not only 2023, but also for several years to come, at more favorable price levels than the ones we had in 2022. It is so that many of those have not yet taken hold completely. Some of them will take effect in January, others in April, and so on, depending a little bit on how the agreement is with the specific customer. Of course, when you are in a rising cost trend, you can get such, let's say sequential quarter-on-quarter effects, where sometimes you're a bit ahead and sometimes you're a bit behind. We're actually quite.
Mm
... proud that we've been able to stay ahead throughout, we have been able to stay ahead in Q4 also. Our ambition going forward is to fully compensate for all year-on-year cost increases in all periods, if they're quarters or if they're years. That also goes for the first quarter. How well we succeed, we'll tell you on, I don't know, in the last week of April or something like that.
Okay. Thank you. That's all for me. Thanks.
The next question comes from Mats Liss from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, thank you. A couple of questions. Coming back to the battery foil segment, if you could just briefly, well, say something about the competition you meet in that segment, also if you address the same type of customers or, yeah, brief, just, touch upon that?
A good question. In the competition situation, like I said before, is quite different in Asia as relative to Europe and Americas. In Asia, we're facing a wide range of competitors, which are, by and large are normal competitors, although our own focus area there is on slightly heavier gauge material than this battery foil is. In Europe and Americas, we're facing very little competition in fact. There are very few players who are supplying this with production in Europe or in the Americas. In fact, you could almost say there are none. Now, we have plans to start deliveries this year in Europe and next year in Americas, and there are also other players who have announced such plans, and mostly they. Very few.
They then tend to be Asian players who are in various ways trying to expand their footprint into Europe and into Americas. Regarding customers, our customers here are partly new because some of these customers are in fact battery manufacturers, and they're, at least I personally have been quite surprised by the very strong interest from large, very technologically impressive leading global battery manufacturers. There is also interestingly an interest of course from OEMs here because many of the OEMs, as you know, are also active in the battery market. That we think is quite interesting because it gives us an opportunity for direct dialogue with the OEMs on things like technology development and so on. We regard that as an important opportunity for Gränges.
Great. Great. Thank you. Then about the figures. I mean, you mentioned the China slowdown in December there, and I guess probably it was a reason maybe, close down. What about the supply chain inventories? Is there any sort of... I mean, automotive is important there. Is that the reason also behind the slowdown or is it entirely due to the COVID relation or that kind of issues?
Well, specifically in China, but actually I think also you could say globally, we are seeing a good development in automotive, which has to do also with the supply chains easing up. That is, of course, in itself a positive, and we expect that to continue during the beginning of the year as we said before. There is of course, not entirely positive is that the easing of the supply chain partly has to do with general maybe demand and supply balances that are going a little bit in the other direction that we're seeing, of course, some concerns about some customers who are now less eager to take on inventory and less hurried to offset supply chain differences.
Specifically in China, we have, I think, been working all the second half of the year at least to catch up with the backlog that we've had, and we continue to work on that, and we still have a large backlog. That makes it difficult to see beyond that, so to speak, into what the actual end demand is, right? I also don't think that many people know what will happen during the year in China. I guess, we can all hope for a recurring demand, generally speaking, when the economy opens up now after COVID, and best case that's what's going to happen.
Great. About the investments you make now in Finspång. Do you expect to be able to finance those entirely, or to a large extent maybe from internal cash flow generation, or do you expect to increase... Could you say something about the mix there?
Sure. when we announced our Navigate plan in May or June, I forget, then we said that our ambition on the financing side is to get below 2 times ratio between net debt and EBITDA and stay there. Now, in this last quarter, we actually got below 2, so we intend to stay there and the SEK 600 million investment in Finspång is compatible with that ambition as far as we can tell with the outlook such as we see it now. That being said, I would like Oskar, maybe you want to say something in addition to that.
I think we can comment a little bit on. Maybe we can comment on two things in relation to that. I think one thing we haven't talked about today but was a significant thing for Gränges in the end of 2022 is that we completed a refinancing exercise, basically, tying our debt portfolio fully to a new sustainability-linked structure, with fairly, also on fairly favorable terms. That's a good starting point to have for Gränges. That said, I think we should also remember that Gränges is a company with a strong underlying cash generation.
For those of you who listened in on our Capital Markets Day, we showed some historical performance there basically that, and that is that our EBITDA to cash generation over time, and we're saying then, basically to cash after maintenance or sustaining investments is typically, on average 75%. That means that of course, this business generates quite some cash that can be spent into expansion investments. That also means that that's how we intend to finance this Finspång investment. Basically through internally generated cash flows and supported by existing new credit facilities if needed.
Great. Just finally about, I mean, you mentioned that you were a bit high on working capital and in, well, inventory maybe. How much do you expect to be able to reduce that? Or what's the do you have any targets to-
I think we can say-
-to communicate?
Yeah. I think it's fair to say that it's a high focus area for Gränges. I think we started to see the results of the focus we put on this in the fourth quarter. We intend to continue to work on this throughout 2023. Now, coming back to what Jörgen said on the outlook, of course, we expect to see a sequential sequential growth in business activity in the beginning of the year. Of course, that is a short term, maybe a little bit of a counter impact on reducing working capital. We continue to see a significant potential for further reductions throughout the year, if not necessarily in the first quarter.
Okay, great. Thank you.
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Pål here. Hello?
Hello. Yes.
Hi. Yeah, sorry about that. Good morning. My first question is just on kind of all of the ongoing ramp up or capacity projects that you currently have, if you could possibly help us with kind of shedding some light on how you foresee those volumes kicking in during this year, both related to kind of, well, let's go with repairs or restoration of Salisbury, but also, the improvement efforts that you made in the other factories and so on.
Let me start with the technical part of this, and then Jörgen can add some more flavor on sort of the organization and business side maybe. Coming back to where you started there with sort of the capacities. Obviously we've had a large number or a few large investments in additional capacity ongoing for last couple of years. In Finspång, we have the internal logistics and automation project that was completed by December this year. That is designed to release an additional 20,000 tons of capacity. Even though that is technically finished, of course, all the assets needs to be ramped up and qualified with customers and so forth.
It doesn't mean that volumes will increase with 20% from one day to another. In Konin, we are running a project to increase from 100 to 140,000 tons. 40,000 more, 40,000 tons more capacity. There we had the setback earlier in 2022, as you know, with the fire. We have only so far achieved 10 of the 40 additional tons of capacity there. The remaining 30 will be back online when the mill that has been damaged has been rebuilt and our current estimate on when that will be is mid-2024.
I mean, that basically, that brings us to a situation now where we basically sit in 2022 had 580,000 tons of capacity. Entering 2023, technically we will have 610, that will become, let's call it operationally available throughout the year. We will be at 640 by mid-2024 when the Konin plant is completed. That's the technical side of it. The Salisbury situation Jörgen has already commented on, of course. It's a focus area for our Americas team to release that capacity that is technically there, but that we currently don't get out of the facility.
As for sort of the investments in battery foil, as Jörgen said, capacity in terms of tonnage may not be the ideal measure for that, but I think the way to think about this is that the battery foil will also of course be a very good way to utilize the existing upstream assets that we have and get an even better return on those. Even though we're not necessarily communicating an additional capacity figure for those particular investments. I don't know, Jörgen, if you want to add something there.
No, other than to say, of course, that productivity is an important topic in any company like Gränges and is going to be an important topic also in 23. That's generally the case when you make new capacity investments, like you also said, Oskar, that in the beginning you have to work a little bit to get them fully all the kinks work out, so to speak, and then you have to work on productivity of those new assets. I regard that as an upside in Gränges in the next couple of years to get all of this new capacity fully utilized and optimized, as we also say in our Navigate plan.
Understood. Thank you for that. The, the second one is related to in part your financial targets and the 10% EBIT growth exceed near term maintain over time. Just thinking about this in EBIT per ton terms. In Americas, EBIT per ton has, well, it's essentially more than doubled since you acquired the platform assets a while back. Whereas, the Eurasia, if we call it that, EBIT per ton is below historical levels. Just think about the EBIT growth and potential improvement in group EBIT per ton. Is it just conceptually, should we think about it as you maintaining the Americas EBIT per ton on this kind of good level and that the uptick will mainly stem from Eurasia improving towards kind of historical levels?
I think the Americas team will not like if we say that they should maintain anything because they're a very ambitious crowd over there. They absolutely have the intention to further improve the EBIT per ton. One way to do that, of course, is to address exactly the issue that you spoke about before, right? I mean, the utilization of our capacity base in Americas is high, but it's not equally high everywhere. We also have the ability in the Americas to make the bottlenecking investment and generally to improve productivity. All those things, of course, can also lead to higher sales volumes. That's generally That's absolutely the Ambition there in addition, of course, to offsetting cost increases with price.
In Europe, and in Asia, you are right that we have a lower general utilization, so that represents, of course, in a way, an easier upside. Then you also have to have the market. Right now, the short-term outlook in Europe is not super fantastic, and in Asia is good, but not as good as the outlook we've had at least in the U.S. in a couple of years. In Europe and in Asia, the challenge is, of course, to find the right customer mix, the right product mix, and the right volumes to utilize our assets there in the best possible way. That worked out well in Europe in the first half of last year, and it worked out well in Asia in the second half of last year.
We, of course, need to have a more stable high utilization over some time before we can say that that is the case. If we did, then, of course, you would see a corresponding margin uptick in Europe and in Asia.
Understood. My final one, if I may, given all of the changes in regional mix and also end market mix over the past two years, putting COVID aside, is there anything you could help us with in how we should think about if you continue to fully offset cost increase, if you do that throughout this year, how one should think about seasonality, in maybe only volumes, but if possible, how we should think about seasonality and profitability per ton?
It's important then to understand what kind of a market scenario we're looking at. If we're looking at the market scenario we are in right now with the manufacturers we have right now, then we would expect, of course, a normal seasonality. That's always the planning assumption, right? That you have normal seasonality going into a year. I guess that's the answer to the seasonality and volume question, that we expect normal seasonality. It will probably be a little better than normal in Asia because of the large backlog we have there, right? A little weaker than normal seasonality in Europe because of the weak market situation there. Those, I think, are things on the margin and in total for, in your job so to speak, maybe a good thing is to expect normal seasonality.
How will that affect profitability? Well, we have a rule of thumb, which is to say that, let me get this straight now. About 7,000 SEK per ton contribution effect of volume up and down is a good rule of thumb. On top of that, we then want to fully offset all year-on-year cost increases, in fact, going all the way back to 2021, in each quarter, in fact, right? That gives you a guidance for how to think about it. How it will actually be, of course, depends on many things and not the least, of course, on the market demand. In terms of planning, that is a good way to think about going, yes.
Understood. Thank you.
There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.
Thank you, operator. I would like to thank everybody for attending this fourth quarter conference call, and I wish you a nice day going forward. Take care and see you soon.